In the early 1980's I worked at IBM's UK Research and Development HQ: Hursley Park near Winchester. Along the corridor from the lab in which I worked lurked a trusty drinks machine — mine's a 13 with extra whitener.

Curious

The aforementioned vending machine would sometimes be adorned with a note: "Out of Order". And sometimes this note would be stuck across the select-and-pay panel. Being younger and quite possibly stupid, I'd experiment. The label, no matter how poorly presented had a kind of power one associated with the security guards on site: their mission in life was to make your day somehow lack any sense of well-being, fun or enjoyment. Anyway. I used to remove the label, insert my 10 pence, select a beverage, press vend and wait expectantly. And everytime it would whir into action. Well, OK, most of the time….

Observation

This pattern has continued to the extent that my approach to almost anything that's reported as broken is: "it's probably working".

Mantra (my V&O)

Machines are rarely as broken as people's impression of them.